The Guardian’s reporting this morning that “education secretary Michael Gove has asked the top universities to set A-level exams, amid fears that tens of thousands of teenagers are woefully under-prepared when they start their degrees”.

So universities freed from public control and increasingly influenced by the private sector and its demands get to set the education agenda for schools that become increasingly under their control as a result and consequently that of the private sector. This is privatisation by the back door.

And what will be the consequence? Three things. First there will be a loss of educational choice: cash value will determine what is taught. Second, there will be increasing division in society as access is determined by ability to pay. Third, there will be a loss in well-being, as explained by Ha-Joon Chang yesterday.

This move is about ‘the great game of life’ – based on the assumption implicit in all private school advertising that a parent’s duty is to make sure their child is thrusting ahead of the pack to beat down all competition. Except it isn’t. Life’s not like that. Indeed work’s not like that. The vast majority of jobs require ‘team players’ i.e. people who have the ability to cooperate with and not beat their fellow employees. Indeed, even business works 97% on co-operation between customer and supplier to achieve mutual goals and little on the basis of competition. But people like Gove want something very different.

The question then is not whether students are ready for university but whether Gove’s view of what education and university is about are right. Given how poor the private sector model of education is at preparing people for the reality of the workplace I very much doubt it.

42 Responses

Your final paragraph shows just how unqualified you are to even begin sprouting about educational matters.

An article full of assertions with little or no substantiation.

Just ask yourself a simple question: why do universities have to discriminate against privately educated students when it comes to awarding places.

And while you are about it – read the Russell Group report on how ill-prepared students are when they arrive at university. Education has been constantly dumbed down by politicians for self-serving reasons, and enough is enough,

Richard, I’m on your side – as a teacher of many years standing, across the secondary and adult sectors.

Somewhere in the squirrelled away mounds of press cuttings that I’m always collecting there’s an excellent Guardian article by Larry Elliot laying into Thatcher’s university policy, in which he makes the then valid observation – which has lost none of its aptness and percipience – that the Iron Lady had got things exactly back to front, and instead of seeking, as she was, to make universities ape business practices (management speak/waffle, Management by Objectives, competition, bottom line), it was business that should seek to follow the Universities (pursuit of excellence, individual achievement through co-operation and the following of example, a disinterested pursuit of truth and real value, not shareholder value).

Back then our Universities were world models, while our business sector stumbled along, from crisis to crisis. Now, after 30 years of being infected by the business model, our Universties have been dethroned from their pinnacles as international models, and are in danger of of being completely suborned by the managerial psycho-babble about the fruitful influence of competition and the importance of bottom line, which is replacing an ethic of co-operation and the common pursuit.

We’ve seen how this policy of “me first” and “to hell with team-work” resulted in the England football squad, made up as it was by a bunch of prima donnas. Now Gove wants to re-shape the whole education after that model, ignoring two vital aspects of real education: first, that team-work and the disinterested exchange of information in pursuit of truth WORKS (look at the Hadron Collider project); secondly, the only place for competition in education is competition against yourself.

But then Gove is only carrying into practice the philosophy behind much Right-wing pedagogical theory, contained in the phrase “The success of the few is DEFINED by the failure of the many.” In other words, if you haven’t got someone to sneer at and look down on, you haven’t succeeded.

A plague on Gove, and all his anti-humanitarian ilk, who wish to turn education (which is about freedom, and freeing the self from limitations = liberation), into mere training and formation (very important, in their place, but if the sole “function” of the process, lead to conformism, lack of questioning and meek acceptance = servitude).

The plan to let the Russell Group universities set the A level syllabus is very strange, given that (a) most A level students don’t go on to Russell Group universities anyway; (b) many A level students don’t go on to university at all.

It’s quite clear that Michael Gove thinks that if you don’t go to a Russell Group university then your education is meaningless.

And this is the Tory vision… well funded education for a small elite and the rest can fend for themselves.

At least New Labour had a clear vision of mass education, even if they were obsessed with testing 7-year old kids.

This is just left wing drivel and if someone wanted to summarise all that is wrong with education in this country they would surely print it off and carry it around in their pocket.

You compare a maths A level today with one set in 1972 and tell me that education hasn’t been dumbed down.

A-levels nowadays serve no useful purpose and exist mainly to give as many people as possible A*s so we can all pat ourselves on the back and say isn’t progress wonderful. What a nonsense.

Go and ask university lecturers why many maths, science and economics- based degrees now have to do remedial mathematics for freshers – because the standard of A-level maths is woefully inadequate.
Why not accept the fact that some people are simply better than others? So long as we all pretend that’s not the case and dumb down to such a degree, then our educational standards will continue to fall.

That contradicts what you wrote recently when you said that being a “team player” was an overrated attribute. I think it was in the context of HMRC but you clearly believed it could be applied more generally.

I could go and hunt it down, or you could admit there is a discrepancy here and explain it now.

Life is cooperative – in the main. It’s only a minority (and I never argued otherwise) who work otherwise

I’m arguing, consistently that we’re therefore focussing education on the minority and no wonder employers are dissatisfied with education as a result

Pity you can’t hold more than one idea in your head at once or see that it’s quite consistent to argue that society needs a multiplicity of solutions and that focussing on one aone is almost invariably bound to be wrong

But that makes you a right winder – the area of thought where compeition between thoughts is never allowed!

I think our country is the only one in Europe to already have their examinations not set by the state – which is why the baccalaureate idea of Napoleon-Gove is so funny, like his Swedish free schools (note the Swedish tax-take and share of their 1% wealthiest in Krugman blog ‘The Swedish One Percent’, March 10, 2012).

Those who think education is being ‘dumbed down’ may wish to go and find out how academics in the UK and US vote (look at the voting patterns of academics in US private universities if you think they all vote Republican) – you may be in for a little surprise.

Is it not that they enjoy access because they are the better candidates? and that then perpetuates the cycle. Sure there is no doubt that there are professions that include the ‘old boys net’ but that will not work out as an average. I was addressing the issue of the statement that private sector students are not prepared for the work place, nothing else. (thought I had made that clear).

From a personal perspective, I have been in both systems and found the private system to be far better. I went from a class of 30 to a class of 8. You were encouraged to actually think rather than box tick and you were pushed and challenged with your thoughts. Might have just been my experience, but I have heard the same things from others.

I would also ask the question that if private schools are failing to prepare students so badly as you claim, why are people queuing to get in? Never before has a failing system had such high voluntary demand.

Are you joking, Keyah? All that private education proves is that with much more money per pupil and much smaller class sizes a better academic result can be acheived. Give the stae sector the same financial resources per child and they would most likely do just as well. For heaven’s sake.

What follows is that the academic qualifications are then joined to the advantageous connections of being a child of the wealthy (parents can subsidise your internship etc) and lo and behold we have greater career progression.

This proves damn all about the superiority of the private sector, just that investment produces results.

Actually, James, outside London the spend per pupil is not significantly different between private and public sectors. It certainly doesn’t explain the far superior exam results achieved in the private sphere.

And the link between class size and results is tenuous at best.

These two points suggest there is something else at play. It is probably that private schooling is more disciplined and has a better ethos.

Hang on – you’re saying that there’s no link between the £15,000 + pa paid for private secondary education around Cambrdige and class size, which is usually half that of a state school and outcome? And you’re saying state spending of less than half that per pupil has no impact either?

Please, very politely pull the other one.

But I will agree with you on one thing: I do think there is an insufficient work ethos in some state schools. A nine to three working day with limited homework is not enough – but that’s because there isn’t enough cash to pay staff to be in front of pupils and to have hours in a day to mark work

But the difference is cash and not ethos and the difference does show, I agree

But that also proves all your analysis utterly wrong – and fantastic, in the real sense of the word

Carol’s points are spot on. The biggest problem with education is not what happens between the ages of 16-18 but between 4-8.

If you are a summer baby (particularly a boy), the first few years of school are much more likely to be a real struggle. As a result, you are likely to regard yourself as not very good and this negative self-view will last throughout your life. Gladwell’s Outliers is fantastic on this point, and how age-derived advantages are reinforced by institutions (so the older children get put into higher sets and given better training etc).

The emphasis on learning to read and write between 4-7 is daft. As Carol says, in Scandanavia they don’t bother until 7 and then have overtaken Britain in a matter of months. Young minds are better spent developing in interesting ways, in learning how to think and evaluate rather than endless rote learning of times tables and letter formation. And the irony is, by the time you get to teenage years, you have a better adjusted school population who are both more intelligent (in the sense of able to think independently) and who know more stuff (exam performance) than those in Britain.

Education is being dumbed down. I have a book called “The O Level Book” at home, giving examples of past exam questions, and my teenagers would not stand a chance against them. It’s nothing new – I am pretty sure that exams were harder in the 70s than they were when I took them in the 80s.

There is absolutely no question that exams are easier now than they were, and one only needs to buy The O Level Book to place that conclusion beyond any doubt

Until last year I marked history GCSE exams. The history paper was one of the few which covered the whole ability range. I marked the sources paper which demands an ability to understand that information can be biased and has to be evaluated. The paper -now replaced-was probably too hard for half the population but some of the best responses caused me to wonder if I could have done that at 16. There is very good teaching going on out there. The less academically able would have been better employed, I feel, in a more fact based syllabus but the demand for “academic standards” meant the needs of the top half took precedence over the needs of the others.
But the exam covered a narrow topic and pupils didn’t have the broad knowledge that O level and some other papers give. Most people leaving school know nothing about events which their parents and grandparents lived through e.g. Thatcherism, the Cold War, relations with the EU, rise of globalisation.
I was talking recently to a person who teaches on a doctoral program in psychology who feels that many of her students lack a basic knowledge which her generation and mine picked up for ourselves.
The emphasis on results has squeezed out a lot of the incidental but relevant knowledge.
And, of course, Gutbucket, O level was deigned by Universities to select those who would go on to A levels and thus become the 10% who went to University in the 1960s. Your conclusion is, I suggest, a bit simplistic.

It’s really sad that the original meaning of ‘educare’ i.e. to ‘lead forth’ or ‘bring out’ seems to be disappearing.
I went to school in Northern Ireland during The Troubles and had a fabulous fully rounded education.
It began with a great primary school, which gave me the bedrock to continue at a great girls’ grammar school, where the education wasn’t just about exams.
It was about becoming a better educated person and we were taught by teachers who nurtured the talents they saw in their pupils.
We were encouraged to question and put our views forward and substantiate them while doing so, and to participate.
Among the many school activities I took part in were being a goalie in the football team and this was at a time when we had to play against boys as well because girls’ teams were thin on the ground both in the United Kingdom and Ireland, ecumenical meetings, public speaking and debating competitions, representing my school in the Northern Ireland junior parliament, fundraising events, dancing and au pairing in France.
In the year that we chose our O level subjects, we had careers advisors in, who also did psychometric testing to give us an idea of the careers our personalities would be suited to, if we chose to follow.
I also left with 10 O levels (2 done a year early), an AO level and 3 A levels, which led to university in England.
I loved it at the time and now realize how advanced my schooling was.
I just wish that those teachers that I had the joy to know and learn from, and who cared for us as people, and who fully realized the original meaning of ‘educare’ i.e. to ‘lead forth’ or ‘bring out’ were in government now, shaping a better, more fully rounded future for ALL.

As always with education the picture is more complex and cannot just be left to politicians or even top university academics alone . Generally there is a teacher professional view that obtaining an ‘A’ grade has become rather easier as the clever/experienced teachers in some subjects can ‘spoon feed’ the more able ( unfortunately those staff are most likely to be in private/selective schools & leafy suburban catchment areas). But you do not need massive change on that you can just award A grades for fixed higher marks not by clever statistical adjustments which looks at performance per paper and then makes changes each time as we have presently do.

But the real worry I have is that these changes will be fundamentally “elitist”. If you stop retakes in January or drastically reduce units you are preventing children the chance to develop over time. To go back to a 1960s model of A level taken at the end of two years is elitist- it takes away chances especially for late developers and it penalizes students in say colleges/schools where there are more challenges . Education is essentially a developmental exercise not about measuring some fixed entity. Even medics can get to do retakes.

The UK needs higher education aimed at many of our 18 year olds not a reproduction of an upper middle class going to the Russell group uni’s. Our society needs a wider system for social mobility, our globalized knowledge-led economy needs quality education for the many This debate is serious stuff and make no bones about it cannot be left to Cove’s crowd as its fundamentally about how working class kids and lower middle class kids will advance in the next few years. With Cove they will not. The old systems favour the privileged who can pay there way to good universities by hiring tutors or selecting private or top schools.

“This is privatisation by the back door,” you write. You fail to note that exams are already privatised – A-levels are currently set by an oligopoly, a closed market of three private, profit-making providers. Edexcel, OCR and AQA are competing for business from schools; this has led to:
1. competitive dumbing-down of exams
2. the proliferation of retakes (because the boards charge per entry); this leads to
3. loss of teaching time; less time for actual education
4. worse-paid, worse-trained and worse-qualified examiners (you do not need to be a teacher to be an examiner)
5. A lower standard of examining, which is unfair for students but boosts exam boards’ profits via retakes.

So while I agree with you about the fetishisation of the market and consequent damage to education, I am not sure that getting the universities involved in exams is necessarily a bad thing, especially if, as the Guardian reports, the exam boards are to “take a step back”.

In the 1950’s and later I recall the Examining Boards being run by Universities and they seemed to function quite well. Obviously, the basis for this at the time would have been quite different from any of our very odd modern notions. The system had its weaknesses but the great strength was that the results were regarded as reliable.

I’ve just read this article and what utter and absolute nonsense it is.

It’s beyond argument that A-levels have been dumbed down. Even when I did my A-levels the module exams were progresively getting easier, and as other posters have mentioned, top Universities are having to run courses to get people up to the right standard in maths for their science degrees (my own Alma Mater, Cambridge, has to do this).

I also had the pleasure (!) of doing some A-level marking in maths and economics a couple of years ago. The papers have become significantly easier to pass, not least because there is much less content, and the most challenging subject matter has been removed from the courses. The exams are also geared such that a lot more marks are available for simple deduction from the question paper rather than correct method or original thought.

Then there is the rubbish that private schools don’t prepare kids for the workplace – as you say in the following comments “They are prepared for a world of privileged access”. Clearly you have a huge chip on your shoulder, but that chip certainly doesn’t explain why grammar schools, which like comprehensives schools are free, also show significantly better results than their comprehensive peers. Whilst there are obviously a lot of factors at work, the idea that privately educated kids are somehow shuttled straight into the top jobs thanks to the name of the school they went to is pure, insulting nonsense.

My own case is a good one – I’m the son of first generation immigrants, professionals, but who never had a great deal of money. My parents were shocked at the standards in the state school I was in – worse than in their own home country even when they were in school there under the Soviets post war. I worked hard, and they pushed me, and won a part scholarship to a private school, aided by an assisted place. Years of very hard work there, focusing on the traditional subjects rather than the non-academically rigourous courses many A-level students are encouraged to take gained me good GCSE and A-level results. That enabled me to get a place at Cambridge. Four more years of hard work there got me a job at a major investment bank.

At no point along the way have my successes ever been to do with the name of my school or any “connections” I have had. The only privilidge I have is the one of having gone to a school which provided me with an excellent education, significantly better than I could have got at the local comprehensive. Add that to hard worked and what I have achieved is off my own back, and for you to suggest otherwise is small-minded and frankly insulting.

And respectfully to you, claiming the private sector is a failed model when it produces infinitely better results is an idea that only someone of the Left could come out with. Especially whilst ignoring the failed impact of the state sector on education, a sector that produces so many people who can’t read or write. Which is the failed model?

As far as I can see your argument is that an elite have produced an especially good education system that suits their own whilst ensuring that there is an alternative education system that is deprived of resources to make sure that no one can challenge their position. Have I got that right?